


Florida in October Sucks

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Getting Back Together, Halloween Horror Nights, M/M, Mentions of PTSD, Universal Studios, for a prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 08:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3320570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Darcy's birthday and Clint agrees to take her to Disney World. Except Darcy hates Disney and Universal Studio's Halloween Horror Nights are much more fun. Except it's eighty degrees Fahrenheit and Clint punches a zombie who turns out to be Phil. That's not so much fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Florida in October Sucks

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Moonblossom's prompt that asks for a character punching an actor at a haunted house. It was meant to be an AU, honest!
> 
> Please see the end notes for spoilery comments regarding the portrayal of PTSD.

The Universal Studios security staff are terribly polite as they escort Clint to the holding room. 

Clint is going to murder Darcy: Halloween Horror Nights? Really? Complete with a zombie apocalypse experience? Both of them should have known better than to take Clint into a situation where he can't see his exits and where the odds of something jumping out at them were astronomical. But Darcy said that Disney gave her hives and they'd already exhausted the possibilities of the Harry Potter Experience so Halloween Horror Nights it was. Also, in fairness, Clint's kind of an expert on flashbangs and fog machines. 

So it hadn't seemed like a _awful_ idea at the time, and perhaps it wouldn't have been such a disaster if the horde of screaming high school girls hadn't swept Darcy away from Clint at the same moment that a zombie who looked exactly like Phil Coulson hadn't lurched out of the shadows in front of the group. 

Clint's nerves had been pretty frayed by the screaming, anyway.

* * *

When the staff finally track down Darcy and let her into the holding room, she's pale and stricken and furious. 

She's also being followed by the actor Clint punched, actual blood mingling with the makeup to truly gruesome effect. He's looking more than a little sheepish around the icepack he's holding to his nose and Clint…

The security staff aren't as polite this time as they restrain Clint. 

Dimly he can hear the zombie Coulson talking quickly and Darcy snarling, but it's mostly drowned out by the buzzing in his ears and fuck, he must be having some sort of psychotic break because that _is_ Coulson in zombie makeup, trying to talk down Darcy who's shouting words like "emotional damages" and "Taser" and "ass monkey". It's sweet, really, Clint thinks as he manages to shake off the staff and reach for his wallet. 

It turns out you can't just pay off the security staff. There are incident reports and things to sign including agreements not to appear on Universal Studios Parks property again and _then_ eye-watering fines to pay which zombie Coulson (actual Coulson in zombie makeup, Clint tries to remind himself) offers to pay, and does on Darcy's insistence. 

They wind up at a Chili's with sticky tables that smells like the S.H.I.E.L.D cafeteria only with more teenagers: families and kids having dinner before the football game at the local high school and a cluster of Universal employees hell-bent on getting as drunk as possible as quickly as possible.   
Phil's cleaned off the makeup and is wearing a black t-shirt that Clint would probably be drooling over of he weren't so furious. Darcy is sucking moodily on blue slush that is more syrup than alcohol and the whole situation reeks of _weird_. 

"I'd have read you in, except you were a little occupied with the Avengers," Phil is saying. "We think that the freelancers Universal is using to operate most of the haunted houses on the property are using them as cover for trafficking Chutari artifacts." 

"So _you_ were under cover," Darcy sneers. Clint thinks maybe he should be defending Phil a little: they've all had to do bizarre things on the job and playing a zombie isn't really that weird, but it's Phil and Phil dropped him like a steaming turd for another team and no, Clint still doesn't have issues around abandonment, not at all. 

"I know it looks bad," Phil says and Clint snorts into his mango flavored ice tea. Phil prods gently at the bandages on his face and winces. Clint slurps some of the more-syrup-than-actual-beverage and tries not to smirk at Phil's discomfort.

* * *

It's late and the wait staff officially hate them. Darcy is pretty much passed out on the table and Phil and Clint have been arguing back and forth for hours: first about Phil's new team, then about the Avengers, then about Florida (and why the hell it's eighty degrees in October), when Clint blurts,

"Darcy and I aren't dating. She's got this weird thing going on with Steve and maybe Barnes. Steve didn't want to leave Barnes and I said I'd bring her down here for her birthday."

Phil just nods. 

"You knew that already," Clint accuses. 

"I may have looked at the file," Phil admits. 

"Yeah, well…"

"Yep," Phil says. 

"You know we…"

"Yeah, I know." Phil's not meeting Clint's eyes. 

"For the record, I know it's been a long time, but I still kind of hate you."

* * *

Phil leaves an enormous tip and drives them to his apartment: a cruddy little second floor walk up that smells of cat and has terrible air conditioning.

"Not the finest safe house," he admits as Clint dumps a grumbling Darcy on the couch. "You can have the bed. I'll take the floor."

"Nah, we can share," Clint says, rolling his shoulders. "You did get punched by an Avenger tonight."

"You're too kind."

"Yeah, well, I'm feeling kind of guilty. How does it feel, by the way?" Clint asks.

"Not great," Phil replies, poking gingerly at his nose. 

"Wasn't supposed to."

* * *

It's nobody's fault that they wake up tangled in each other. 

It's Phil's fault that he wakes Clint up with thunderous snoring. 

Although that might be Clint's fault, in fairness. 

Either way, Clint can't help the lump in his chest when he wakes up and realizes that he'd forgotten that Phil does a fantastic human octopus impression with his bedmates. Or at least with Clint. 

"So I maybe made a mistake," Clint says in the quiet. Phil snuffles and snores.

"Maybe I was wrong about not forgiving you for not telling me you were alive."

"I kind of miss you. A lot, actually."

Phil snores and drools a little. It's ridiculously adorable and Clint hates how it makes him feel.

* * *

Clint flies a very hung over Darcy home later that same morning. Breakfast had been tension free, mostly because Phil had gotten up and left half an hour after Clint's one-sided conversation with him and Clint pretended to still be asleep. 

"Okay, so Florida sucks," Darcy confesses as they're somewhere over Virginia and she's stopped looking quite so green.

Clint can't help but agree.

"And I guess… sorry about the whole PTSD thing," she continues. 

"What PTSD thing?" Clint asks. 

"You know, the part where you punched an actor because your instincts got triggered," Darcy says. "Except it was Agent Suit and he totally deserved it, but other than that, I guess it's kind of my fault and I'm sorry."

"Oh, _that_ PTSD thing," Clint says. "Yeah, well… um. Sure."

"Good thing I didn't make Bucky or Steve take me, I guess," Darcy says. "Bucky probably would have burned the place down."

"Yeah, probably." Clint really can't think of anything intelligent to say at the moment, especially about combat-related trauma or whatever because that's not something he's ever talked about unless S.H.I.E.L.D or Pepper made him. And those episodes aren't really all that useful.

It's just not something he does, okay?

"And well, the Phil thing," Darcy continues.

"What Phil thing?" Clint asks. 

"Not every day you accidentally punch your asshole ex-boyfriend in the face because you think he's a zombie."

Clint doesn't say anything: he can think of even _less_ to say about Phil than he can about his probably fucked up but who cares he hasn't murdered anyone who didn't deserve it psyche.

* * *

"Darcy's being protective of you," Natasha says as she lands a solid blow. Clint counters and tries to sweep her feet out from under her. "She's young and the idea that grownup relationships are complicated is hard."

Clint offers her his hand up off the floor and she ignores him to flip up to her feet.

"Although I'd hardly call what you are a 'grownup'," Natasha says with a smirk. "And the way Phil is about you…"  
Clint blinks up at the gym lighting, trying to clear his head.

* * *

Clint decides that the best way to fix the problem is by ambushing Phil in his office three weeks later. He would have done it sooner but there'd been Avenging to do (radioactive ferrets, _again_ ) and Phil had had to wrap up the Florida mission.

"Natasha and Darcy think we still have feelings for each other," Clint says.

Phil spills his coffee over his desk. 

"Yeah, that was what I thought, too, at first," Clint admits. "But then I started thinking about it and you know how Natasha's not wrong about shit."

"Yes, I am aware," Phil says, blotting at papers. 

"So, we gonna talk about feelings or can we just skip to the part where we admit we were kind of assholes to each other and, like, do makeup sex or something? Because I'm tired of this talking thing."

"Uh…" Phil stops blotting papers. "You know that I'm… different, right? That things changed."

"Yeah, I know," Clint says. He does, he really does, but dammit, talking. "Look, what about one day at a time or something? Like, we start with blowjobs and go from there."

Phil smiles and Clint relaxes. Seeing Phil smile is _good_.

"So it's an evolving thing," Clint says. "And we can talk later. Blowjobs now."

Phil's face does something complicated: Clint knows that look. Phil's trying to figure out an argument against Clint's idea. Clint's seen it enough times through his scope. Clint also knows that when Phil makes that face, he's won. 

Aw, yeah. Blowjobs. With Phil.

"So," Clint says. "You wanna do this in your office?"

"Ah," says Phil.

"It's cool," Clint says, holding out his hand. "I got a place not far. Got to warn you, there's a dog. And a girl Hawkeye. But she's awesome and I'm pretty sure she'll, like take Lucky for a walk if I ask nicely."

**Author's Note:**

> No actual zombies were punched during the writing of this fic. Clint may or may not actually have PTSD: I'm basing his reactions on those of a retired combat veteran at IKEA. True story. Nobody got punched there, but it was a near thing. 
> 
> Obviously, combat related PTSD is a serious issue, and while Clint's reaction is the inciting incident, this is not really a story about that.


End file.
